hard drives Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Will an SSD work in an older computer that has a SATA II interface?

Posted on August 7, 2021

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Question from Richard G.: Hi Rick. I hope you can answer a question for me.

I have an old Gateway LX6810-01 desktop PC that came with a 640 Gig hard drive. The hard drive died and I want to replace it with a solid state drive (SSD).

My cousin has offered to sell me an unused 1TB Gig SSD for $45 which is half what he paid for it a just couple of weeks ago. He wants to sell it because he found out it won’t work with his old Leading Edge computer.

My question is will this drive work in my computer since the old hard drive had a SATA II interface and the SSD is SATA III? [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to span two hard drives to make one large drive in a Windows PC?

Posted on March 28, 2021

Question from Carl: I read here that you can “span” (i.e. combine) multiple hard drives and use them as one large drive and access them all with a single drive letter.

I have a used, but working 500GB hard drive at home that I could install in my Windows 10 desktop computer to span with the 750GB drive that’s already in it to effectively give me a 1.25TB drive.

I happened to be in Best Buy the other day and I asked one of the Geek Squad techs if they could span the two hard drives into one for me.

His answer was they could but they didn’t recommend spanning drives because if one of the spanned drives failed you’d lose all the data stored on all the drives.

He said it’s a lot safer to simply install a 2TB drive and be done with it. And of course he conveniently had one available to sell me.

Was he telling the truth or was he just trying to sell me a new hard drive?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Will the photos stored on an unused hard drive last forever?

Posted on January 23, 2021

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Question from Stella P.: I have thousands of family pictures that I’ve copied onto an external hard drive.

That drive is currently locked up in a fireproof lock box.

My question is will those pictures last forever or is their lifetime limited in any way?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Why do drive letters start with ‘C’ on Windows PCs?

Posted on December 22, 2020

Question from Brittney P.: I have a question I’ve been wanting the answer to for a long time and nobody seems to know the answer.

Now that I’ve found this site I’ll ask you!

I’ve noticed that the drive letters in computers always start with “C” and go up from there?

There doesn’t seem to be an “A” drive or a “B” drive. Can you tell me why that is?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to clone the contents of a hard drive onto a new hard drive or SSD

Posted on November 29, 2020

There are times when we need to copy the entire contents of one hard drive onto another hard drive.

This process is called “cloning”, and it is most often done when upgrading to a larger drive or replacing a drive that is about to fail.

Cloning a hard drive isn’t all that difficult. All you need is both drives connected to the computer at the same time and a copy of a good hard drive cloning utility (I use and recommend Clonezilla because it works well and is available as a free download).

Here’s how to use Clonezilla to clone the contents of one hard drive onto another: [Read more…]